Love, faith and hope are eternal.

It takes eternal optimism to be a winter mountaineer in Scotland. This winter has been more testing than most for those of use who enjoy nothing more than finding solid snow ice in steep places to climb. But our love of climbing, faith in the weather and hope that it will all come good in the end might be about to be rewarded with just a little of what we're after.

The thaw and really heavy rain on Friday night and Saturday morning did not wash away all the snow, especially on Ben Nevis. We had more snow today and the summit temperature is forecast to stay low this week. The current snow pack is saturated and the ground underneath is not at all cold so it will take several days for the snow and turf to freeze. But by the end of the coming week we might well have a few snow ice climbs in something like climbable condition.

I'm not suggesting that we're going to get brilliant ice climbing but to be honest I'll settle for a few climbs such as Green Gully and Point Five Gully just so we can say it was not a complete wash out.